NAMING SUBMARINES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 124, 30 May 1927, Page 9

NAMING SUBMARINES

INNOVATION IN NAVY

SIZE AND DIGNITY

(From "Jha Post* Representative.) LONDON, 23rd April. The recent new departure of allotting names to the submarines under construction for the Koyal Navy should help to make this branch more popular Now that these vessels are so large seakeeping, and self-contained, it is fit- " Th/ThL*! 1 n of the added dignity which names, instead of numbers, confer upon them. A move in this direction was made just before the war, when two vessels of a special type were named the Nautilus and the Swordfish. But with the multiplication of snbmannes of the "E" class in the war programme, and the rapid development of other designs, up to and including the so-called submarine monitors of the "M" class, with 12in guns, the older plan of initials and numbers persisted, and was perhaps more convenient in the circumstances. It would not have been altogether an. easy matter to find names for the 146 submarines built during the war, without somo confusion with'those of surface vessels. Thei first submarine to which the'new p £r has. b««n, applied is 61, laid down in Maijch, 1824, at Chatham, and now just completed. She will be known as the Oberon, a warship name dating back to 1805, and last borne by a des''OyCrn,7hlc* Berved *»'»"» the late wax. The six submarines of the. 1026----i l' programme (the first of the 24 which are projected under the fourycar schedule up to 1929-30) have also been names. The Chatham TO 1 *M be th<> Odin; the two to be built by Messrs. Beardmoro will bo the Olympus and Orpheus; and t throe by^Messrs. Tickers the Osiris, Oswald and Otus. Koyal Australian Navy is also conforming to the plan, and the two submarines now under construction (or it at the Vickers yard will be called the Oxley and the Otway. THE OEPHEUS. Only three of this group of eieht names seem to have been borne before by vessels of tho Boyal Navy, those being Odin, Orpheus, and Osiris. The last-named, moreover, only came into use m this connection during the late war. Orpheus has the longest record, «g ?%\ t0 lm- Six'yean later the first Orpheus, a 32-gun frigate, was sunk at New York to block the passage into the inner harbour. Later ships qf this name also had associations with the United States, and one, a screw corvette, was wrecked, with large loss of ml*' m New Zealand waters in 1863 Then in the war of 1914-18 the name was given to a destroyer. Odin as a British warship name came into the bervico by the capture in 1807 of a Danish vessel. The last Odin was a sloop, which rendered good servico in Mesopotamina in the war, and wa« scrapped in 1920. Of the names new to tho fleet, the most appropriate is Otus, the son of Neptune. The influence of the classics is also seen in the choice of Olympus. Oswald has apparently no such classical association, and introduces a rather, more personal note into the selection, As a Christian name it signifies "div- I me power," an attribute foi» which a submarine commander on active service might well long. 85, Fleet street.